Consider a complex manufacturing and logistics organisation, based at the North Pole, traditionally very busy around the 25th December. As you might imagine, planning for this event takes all year – no sooner has Santa Claus sat down on Boxing Day then he’’s called to deal with all sorts of unplanned events that require attention.

This year, it started early. Santa was putting the sleigh in the garage when he was accosted by Mrs Claus.

““What are these reports on the radio about you kissing somebody’’s Mommy?”” she demanded.

““W, w, what? Who?”” Santa stammered.

Santa was able to explain that there must have been a case of mistaken identity. Santa’’s image had taken a battering at the hands of an imposter. He was straight onto his Incident Management Team and, following a quick injunction and a public apology, his reputation was restored. He couldn’’t afford for his customers to think he was in anyway naughty.

February brought ice storms to the North Pole.

““Sir, it’’s too cold for the employees to work,”” his Elf and Safety Manager told him, “”I have instructed the elves to down tools.””

Santa sighed and reached for the Yellow Pages, “”Hello, heat engineers? It’s just possible you could save my elves…”.”

Despite the interruption, with a bit of overtime, the Elves were soon back on schedule.

Things carried on uninterrupted until spring saw flocks of birds returning from their winter habitats. Concern rose amongst Santa’’s employees that the wild birds may bring the H5N1 avian flu virus with them, giving rise to concerns about an epidemic. Santa consulted the WHO website for the latest advice.

““There’’s currently little risk for us, the birds are returning from countries where there has been no recorded H5N1 outbreaks, but to be sure, I’’ll employ a couple of special wardens specifically to keep an eye on the well-being of the birds”” he told his elves, hoping that he wouldn’’t have to employ more wardens when the wild reindeer herds returned. He’’d read that the Blue Tongue virus was spreading north and already had problems with one of his sleigh crew having a red nose….

The summer holidays always presented Santa with problems, bored children with too much time on their hands were always on the lookout to cause mischief. This year Santa’’s IT partners informed him one morning that his “Naughty or Nice” database had been hacked! The status of all the children had been changed and there was no way they could sort it out.

Fortunately Santa is pretty tech-savvy. He didn’’t panic and instructed his IT department to delete the data and restore from the back up. As extra insurance, he asked for a full virus check to be undertaken, arranged for the firewall firmware to be updated and instructed all the elves to change their passwords.

There were no further problems to distract Santa. Come the 24th, the Elves loaded up the sleigh and the reindeer team was harnessed. Santa clambered up into the driving seat, picked up the reins with one hand and turned the sleigh’s ignition with the other. There was a short croak and then nothing. He turned the key again, with the same result. Santa realised that when he had been managing his reputation issues last year, he’’d forgotten to turn the sleigh headlights off. The battery had gone flat.

Fortunately, on Mrs Claus’ insistence, the date was the 24th of November and Santa and Elves were running an exercise. Sure, Santa hated having to squeeze into his suit before his annual diet had worked off all the previous year’s mince pies, the Elves got cranky at having to load and unload the sleigh and the reindeer team disliked being taken from their warm stables, but Mrs Claus had seen the benefits of exercising ahead of “the “big off””. The battery was rigged up to the charger and, come the big day, all the good children received the right presents thanks to Santa’’s business continuity arrangements….